Pirate Trap - First
The squat captain of the Bullywog, an equally squat frigate, leaned forwards in his chair and snarled. He was a rough looking character, hairy and vaguely apelike with long muscular arms and squat bowed legs. His species was one who progressed best on the things they could take from other races more than their own ingenuity. Yet, what they lacked in ingenuity they made up for easily in aggression.
“The machine worked, but where is the prey?” He spat through jagged teeth to his crewmate on one of the nearby consoles, as they pulled away from the debris of a much larger cargo ship they used both as cover and as a trap. The systems on it had been jury-rigged in order to create a makeshift boson cloud exciter across this section of the jump lanes. “I do not see it. Do not tell me that you missed.”
The tactical officer, as much as the position meant anything aboard this pirate ship, looked uncertainly about as they checked instruments. “Ah, no Captain Dulgog. Readings reflected boson particles, the net was disturbed. We must have caught something?”
Captain Dulgog’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forwards to the main viewscreen of the bridge, staring out into the empty expanse of the void where the cloud passed. The crewmate he had addressed started sorting through scans quickly, trying to read any EM signatures in the area. He was starting to panic, as the Captain’s anger was well known. His most recent promotion had come at the loss of the last one of his station through an unfortunate mistake. The mistake, of course, being that he had failed to meet the Captain’s exacting standards. It wasn’t looking good, however, there were energy signatures in that field but it was scrambled and weak from the burst of a popping jump field in the cloud.
“What happened to it, then. Is it cloaked? Did it punch through?” He snarled, coming over to the tactical officer and reaching one of his long burly arms to grasp ahold of the smaller crewmember, throwing him partway across the bridge. He began to inspect the readings himself as the crewmate scrambled away, realizing a brief moment of escape during the Captain’s distraction. The question hadn’t actually been directed at him, and he knew that staying around would likely only make him the recipient of the Captain’s incoming anger.
The Captain inspected the readings. What he lacked in intelligence he made up well for in cunning and intuition. He knew something was off, the prey was still there - he could practically smell it in the sensors here as he watched the EM eddies start to flutter away.